Philosophy

Computer science, cognitive science and artificial intelligence are modern areas of research that philosophy has played a role in developing. The images on these cards are generally based on colored photographs, and are readily identified by the glossy appearance given by the paper's coating. What were once philosophical pursuits have evolved into the modern day fields of psychology, sociology, linguistics, and economics (among others). The last and current postcard era, which began about 1939, is the "photochrome" or "chrome" era. Often, philosophy is seen as an investigation into an area not understood well enough to be its own branch of knowledge. The "linen card" era lasted from about 1930 to 1945, when cards were primarily printed on papers with a high rag content. In general, the various "philosophies of," such as philosophy of law, can provide workers in their respective fields with a deeper understanding of the theoretical or conceptual underpinnings of their fields. The "white border" era, named for obvious reasons, lasted from about 1916 to 1930.

Even ontology, surely the most abstract and least practical-seeming branch of philosophy, has had important consequences for logic and computer science. Thus began the Golden Age of American postcards, which lasted until about 1915, when World War I blocked the import of the fine German-printed cards. Aesthetics can help to interpret discussions of art. The "divided back" card, with space for a message on the address side, came into use in the United States in 1907. Philosophy of science discusses the underpinnings of the scientific method. This "undivided back" is what gives this postcard era its name. Other important applications can be found in epistemology, which might help one to regulate one's notions of what knowledge, evidence, and justified belief are. Written messages were still restricted to the front side, with the entire back dedicated to the address.

In the field of the philosophy of education, progressive education as championed by John Dewey has had a profound impact on educational practices in the United States in the twentieth century. 1901 brought cards with the word "Post Card" printed on the reverse (the side without the picture). The political philosophies of Confucius, Kautilya, Sun Tzu, Immanuel Kant, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Niccolo Machiavelli, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, Mahatma Gandhi, Robert Nozick, and John Rawls have shaped and been used to justify governments and their actions. A correspondent's writing was allowed only on the front side of these cards. The most obvious applications are those in ethics – applied ethics in particular – and in political philosophy. Shortly thereafter the United States government, via the United States Postal Service, allowed printers to publish a 1-cent postcard (the "Penny Postcard"). Though often seen as a wholly abstract field, philosophy is not without practical applications. The first postcard in the United States was created in 1893 to advertise the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois.

The western philosophical tradition began with the Greeks, while that of Asia originated, largely, in China and the Indian subcontinent. The idea is that it stands out and cannot be filed away in a folder somewhere. At least since the publication of Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy the most prominent division of philosophy has been between the philosophies of the "West" and the "East". Some activists create oversized postcards on poster boards urging action on a particular issue and mail them to public officials' offices. Islamic civilization also produced many philosophical geniuses such as, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroës), and Al-Ghazali (see Islamic philosophy). The study and collecting of postcards is termed deltiology. In Persia, Zarathustra's teachings which were a new basis for the Iranian branch of Indo-Iranian philosophy appeared around 900 BC. The art form is called mail art.

In India, major philosophical texts include the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, from circa 500 BCE (see Hindu philosophy). In the art world the postcard can also be translated into an art object. In China, the Tao Te Ching of Laozi and the Analects of Confucius both appeared around 600 BCE, about the same time as the Greek pre-Socratics were writing. While a postcard is usually printed by a private company, individual or organization, a postal card is issued by the relevant postal authority. Philosophical thinking also developed elsewhere, and can be seen in many ancient texts. It is distinguished by stamp collectors from a postal card in that the postage is pre-printed on the latter, whereas a postcard requires a stamp. Eastern philosophy follows the broad traditions that originated or were popular in India, Persia, the Middle East, and China. A postcard or post card is a typically rectangular piece of thick paper or thin cardboard intended for writing and mailing without an envelope and at a lower rate than a letter.

The question of which specific languages can be considered essential to philosophizing is a theme in the works of many recent philosophers. Languages can either be a barrier or a vehicle for ideas. On account of the widespread emphasis on western philosophy as a reference point, the study, preservation and dissemination of valuable but not widely known non-western philosophical works faces many obstacles. Other philosophical traditions, such as African, are rarely considered by foreign academia.

The subject matter and dialogues of each can be studied using methods derived from the others, and there have been significant commonalities and exchanges between them. The differences between traditions are often based on their favored historical philosophers, or emphases on ideas, styles or language of writing. Russian, Jewish, Islamic and recently Latin American philosophical traditions have contributed to, or been derivative of western philosophy, yet retain a distinctive identity. Eastern and Middle Eastern philosophical traditions have influenced western philosophers.

Members of many societies have considered philosophical questions and built philosophic traditions based upon each other's works. But we are embedded in the world. To have faith in the reality of the "external world", presupposes a subject which is worldless. This is strikingly similar to themes found in 'Continental' writers such as Heidegger, who argues that the 'scandal of philosophy' is not that the proof of the existence of an external world has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again.

Such a mistake would make no sense – literally so, for if the question of whether the Eiffel Tower, London exists, were intelligible, we would have to admit the possibility that those names have no meaning, and thus that the question was not intelligible in the first place. Thus the thought 'Socrates is wise' has Socrates himself as a component, and thus there can be no question of our being radically mistaken as to the nature or existence of an external world. This is that proper names ('Socrates', 'George Bush') refer directly to their bearers, and that their meaning is not mediated by any 'sense' or subjective meaning. A similar idea (though developed from a somewhat different starting point) is the view known as externalism defended recently by philosophers such as John McDowell and Gareth Evans.

Yet this is an assumption shared by analytic philosophers. Thus an important theme of phenomenology is an attack on the subject-object dualism of Cartesianism. A fundamental assumption of this school is that mental phenomena have intentionality, they have objects, external to and independent of the mind itself. Continental philosophy, in the hands of the phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, took a different turn, in its preoccupation with consciousness.

Russell's The Philosophy of Logical Atomism is an outline of such a project, Wittgenstein's Tractatus is a more detailed attempt, although famously obscure and aphoristic. Some philosophers (beginning with Frege and Bertrand Russell), have argued that first order logic shows us the true logical form of ordinary language sentences. The difficulty, as yet unresolved, is to determine what the correct logical form must be. According to analytic philosophers, the true meaning of ordinary language sentences is, somewhat misleadingly, concealed by their grammatical form, and we must translate them into their true form (known as logical form) in order to clarify them.

'baldness', 'existence') there corresponds something in reality. We imagine that to every word (e.g. What underlies the analytic tradition is the view (originally defended by Ockham) that philosophical error arises from misunderstandings generated by language. Both traditions appear radically different, yet they have a common root, namely a rejection of the Cartesian and empiricist tradition that dominated philosophy since the early modern period, and particularly of the psychologism that pervaded the logic and method of Idealist philosophy.

The modern period in philosophy, beginning in the late nineteenth century to the 1950's, was marked by a developing schism in philosophy between 'Continental' tradition, which is mainly Franco-German, and the English and American 'Analytic' tradition. One of the most influential was Edmund Husserl, who founded the philosophical mode known as phenomenology. By the late 19th Century, however, several important philosophers argued against the Kantians' skeptical attitude. Immanuel Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason in an attempt to reconcile the conflicting views and establish a new groundwork for studying metaphysics rooted in the analysis of the conditions for the possibility of knowledge.

Hume was heavily influenced by empiricists John Locke, George Berkeley, Isaac Newton, and Samuel Clarke. The British Empiricists, John Locke and the Anglo-Irish George Berkeley and David Hume, developed a form of Scepticism and naturalism on roughly scientific principles. In his Meditations, he systematically destroys all the foundations of knowledge except one (I am thinking, therefore I am), and then uses this single indubitable fact to rebuild a system of knowledge. Descartes, who is often called the father of modern philosophy, proposed that philosophy should begin with a radical skepticism about the possibility of obtaining reliable knowledge.

His synthesis of Aristotelian metaphysics and practical reasoning with Christian teaching became characteristic of medieval philosophy. One of the greatest synthesizers of Christian and Aristotelian thought was Thomas Aquinas. Plato defined the issues with which philosophy still wrestles. While Socrates wrote nothing, his influence survives through that of his pupil.

Socrates and his pupil Plato revolutionized philosophy. Important pre-Socratic philosophers include Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Parmenides, and Heraclitus. Ancient Greek philosophy is typically divided into the pre-Socratic Period, the philosophy of Plato, and the philosophy of Aristotle. Étienne Gilson, in his book The Unity of Philosophic Experience, attempts to show important connections between the ideas of the medieval period and their development in the modern period; this is contrary to traditional interpretations of modern philosophy as a new era unconcerned with the past.

There is also now focus being put on the post-modern period, especially existentialism. Traditionally, the history of western philosophy is divided into three areas: Ancient Greek, Medieval, and Modern. The Greeks, through the influence of Socrates and his method, developed a tradition of analysis that divided a subject into its components to understand it better. Aristotle, who was the first to use this classification (as he believed that to call himself "sophos" or wise was immodest), also considered politics (which he saw as part of ethics), modern-day physics, geology, biology, meteorology, and astronomy as branches of philosophical investigation.

These five broad types of question are not the only subjects of philosophical inquiry, and there are many overlaps between the categories which are subsumed within the discipline under the four major headings of Logic, Ontology, Epistemology, and Axiology. Aesthetics is often considered as a fifth branch. The modern classification, which originates with Christian Wolff, is into four main branches: logic, metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Logic he regarded as theoretical, but not as a science in its own right, since it is a necessary preliminary to all knowledge.

Aristotle regarded Ethics not as part of theoretical philosophy at all, but as a practical discipline. The Aristotelian division was as follows:. There is no universal agreement about which subjects are the main branches of philosophy. Philosophy, in this respect, may involve thinking about thinking.

Rather than merely using the concepts that are usually employed in everyday life in thinking about the world, philosophy also makes those concepts themselves the object of study. Indeed, the unifying goal behind philosophical inquiry may simply be the process of thinking through interesting questions. Others say that, at most, the goal of philosophy is to make explicit, or to clarify, the nature and significance of ordinary and scientific beliefs. Those attracted to the 'big questions' say the point of philosophy is to discover the absolutely fundamental reasons behind everything, or to unify and transcend the insights given by science and religion.

Philosophers disagree on the goal of philosophical enquiry. For example: "What is the meaning of life? How did the world begin? Do I have a soul? Will my soul survive my death? What really exists? Could nothing have ever existed?". Philosophy generally concerns itself with what are sometimes called 'the big questions'. Quite the opposite: science in general used to be known as "natural philosophy".

However, this was not the attitude taken by ancient Hellenistic philosophers, who saw any intellectual investigation as philosophy. These philosophers may believe that philosophy does not employ the methods of empirical science, and its questions cannot be answered by observation or experiment, although observation and experiment may prompt those questions. Some philosophers believe that philosophy is not experimental. The role of empirical experimentation in philosophy is questionable.

Rather, they are encouraged to provide good reasons for any conclusions they come to. Philosophy students are taught not to take anything on trust, "particularly if it seems obvious and undeniable" (Hodges). Philosophers try wherever possible to examine and criticise beliefs that are commonly taken for granted. Philosophy has a critical or skeptical nature.

There is some broad agreement that philosophy is characterised by a certain method, subject matter, and objectives. . Informally, a "philosophy" may refer to a general world view or to any specific ethic, belief, ritual, doctrine, or claim which is characterised in terms of abstraction and self-reflection. Philosophical literature is characterized by its use of reasoning and argument in order to come to cogent conclusions.

In the modern context, it is used both formally and informally to refer to debates concerning knowledge, reason, logic, and belief in their most fundamental and abstract forms. The term philosophy comes from the ancient Greek word "Φιλοσοφία" (philo-sophia), which means "love of wisdom". Aesthetics: What is it to be beautiful? How do beautiful things differ from the everyday? What is Art? Does true beauty exist?. Metaphysics: What is reality, and what exists? What is the nature of those things? Do some things exist independently of our perception? What is the nature of space and time? What is the nature of thought and thinking? What is it to be a person?.

Ethics: Is there a difference between morally right and wrong actions (or values, or institutions)? If so, what is that difference? Which actions are right and which wrong? Are values absolute, or relative? In general or particular terms, how should I live? How is right and wrong defined? Is there an ultimate "ought"? Is there a normative value or objective that supersedes all others? Are values 'in' the world like tables and chairs and if not how should we understand their ontological status?. Epistemology: Is knowledge possible? How do we know what we know? How do we take what is "known" to extrapolate what is "unknown"?. Logic: What is truth? How or why do we identify a statement as true or false? And, how do we reason?. This is a much wider and more 'philosophical' subject than the modern subject of the same name, encompassing the philosophy of perception, the theory of knowledge, the nature of the soul (now similar to what is called 'philosophy of mind').

Psychology. This includes the nature of material substance, of quality and quantity, of space, causation and change. Cosmology. The science of what ultimately exists, now sometimes called Ontology.

Metaphysics.